


The Second Hiatus (1891-1894)

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 221B [129]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Assassination, Coping, Destiel - Freeform, Disguised Sherlock, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 22:44:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11262561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The worst three years of Doctor John Watson's life. A time known by his loyal readers - all too accurately - as 'The Hellatus'.





	The Second Hiatus (1891-1894)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MelodyofWings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelodyofWings/gifts).



**1891**

It was one of the many bitter ironies of life, but I was man enough to admit that I would not have got myself through the next three Sherlock-less years without the help and assistance of Mr. Lucius Holmes who, I suspected, felt the loss of the great man almost as much as I myself did, despite his lack of visible emotions. Some six years older than Sherlock, I had met him on but a handful of occasions, and it had always struck me that he was far more the typical government agent than either of his younger (and infinitely more annoying) siblings. It also struck me that whilst he was estranged from the rest of his family for reasons I knew not, he was prepared to work with Bacchus and Gaylord for the sake of their younger brother. I did not envy him in that task.

I said goodbye to Mrs. Moseley, who wished me well for the future, and Mr. Lucius Holmes took me back to Kansas City – I was heartily glad to be away from Lawrence – and onto St. Louis the next day, where we paused for a day whilst I tried to pull myself together. Across the vastness of the still-growing United States, it took some days to make the journey back to New York, from whence we took the “Teutonic” back to Liverpool. We hardly spoke for the whole of the crossing, and upon arriving spent a night at a hotel in the port city.

I fully expected us to start for London the following day, but instead we boarded a Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway train for York, a small local train that seemed in no particular hurry to cross the Pennines. I voiced no objection; I did not really care as to where we went, now that I no longer had Sherlock. On reaching Leeds, Mr. Lucius Holmes led me out onto the station forecourt, and I stared at him in puzzlement. He seemed to be waiting for someone....

“Hullo, jerk!”

I turned in shock, and there behind me was the unmistakable beanpole figure of my little brother, Sammy. I stared at him for far too long before all but falling into his arms, weeping like an actress in some terrible melodrama. I did not notice Mr. Lucius Holmes hand him a sheet of papers before slipping away, and my brother led me quietly to a platform where a reserved first-class carriage awaited me. I knew that this must be Sherlock's brother's doing; there was no way that Sammy could have afforded something like that.

+~+~+

We had been underway for some little time before I pulled myself together enough to speak.

“Thank you”, I muttered. He smiled nervously at me. 

“Bitch!” I muttered, belatedly echoing our childhood catechism that had had our mother clipping both our ears at more than one point in the past. He chuckled.

“Your friend Mr. Lucius has arranged four weeks off work for me, plus childcare”, he said gently. “If you want to return to Baker Street, Sir Charles has said that he will continue to pay your friend's share of the rent for as long as you wish to stay there.”

I felt awkward about that. Whilst I did not like the idea of my being beholden to anyone, I knew there was no way that I could afford to keep those rooms as a single tenant, and the idea of allowing anyone else in to share with me.... my blood ran cold at the thought! Unhealthy though it almost certainly was, I wanted to keep what little I could of my lost friend. Besides, I had stayed there last time, and he had come back then.....

Sammy reached over and took my hand in his, and I bit back another sob. I was all over the place, but I owed it to Sherlock to try to carry on. And to share our remaining and so far unpublished adventures with a general populace who could only slowly come to know the terrible truth, of how one of the greatest and most wonderful human beings ever to grace this earth was now lost to them forever. 

+~+~+

My four weeks with Sammy and Jessica passed all too quickly, and I declined his offer of accompanying me back to London. I had to face the horrors of our rooms without Sherlock, and I was determined to do it alone. The journey seemed to take forever, and when the cab drew up outside 221B, I was painfully aware that I was returning to an empty house.

I had been dreading having to tell Mrs. Harvelle and her daughter about what had happened, but apparently they already knew (Mr. Lucius Holmes, presumably). I walked slowly upstairs to our rooms – my rooms now, I supposed – and unlocked the door. Walking in, I dropped my bag carelessly on the floor and went to hang up my coat. 

Sherlock's ridiculous lumberjack hat was still on the coat-stand.

That was when I finally broke, falling to the floor and sobbing uncontrollably. I had lost him!

+~+~+

Fortunately, my small circle of friends all knew me well enough to realize that anyone who uttered the old canard that 'life goes on' would receive short shrift, if not the irregular and improper use of a medical instrument. Of course it did, if what I had left could be called life. I took on more patients, but was surprised to find that my muse, which I had been sure would have abandoned me as a lost cause, was still there. Shortly before the dramatic events that took me – and Sherlock – across the ocean, I had furnished the “Strand” magazine with the finished tale of our canine caper in Middlesex ('The Naval Treaty') and counting up, I realized that I had ten more stories that were printable (or at least which Sherlock had said could be published) before having to recount the recent and terrible events. My erstwhile publishers Brett & Burke were also pressing me for a further book; in the end I agreed to publish the cases up to Sherlock's passing in two books of five stories each, provided as usual that the magazine got to serialize them all first. 

One of the most painful parts of continuing on at Baker Street was having to deal with the daily flood of mail which arrived, mostly for people requesting Sherlock to help them with their cases. I do not know why, but the trifling sort of things which he would have surely found intriguing only served to vex me when I read them, and I quickly drew up a standard letter of reply, stating that Sherlock would be unavailable to tackle new cases 'until further notice'. Mr. Lucius Holmes kindly helped me in this by taking out advertisements in the major London newspapers which re-iterated the message, and over time the flood slowly dried up. I owed Mrs. Harvelle and her staff dearly for turning away all the personal callers, which I could not have coped with.

One incident that year which demonstrated all too well my own abysmal lack of detective abilities should, in all fairness, be recorded. I was looking for something in the back of one of the cupboards when I came across an old blanket of mine, which I remembered that Sherlock had borrowed some time back. Quite what it was doing at the back of a cupboard containing mostly papers was odd, and as I smelt it, memories of him came flooding back. I supposed that his scent must have lingered on it somehow, and if I chose to stay home that day with said blanket wrapped tightly around me, I was not being the least bit pathetic.

All right, not that pathetic.

Huh, who was I kidding?

The last adventure in the first of my two new books, that of 'The Engineer's Thumb', was sent in to be edited in October, though with the magazine serializing part of each story each week, it would be early the following year before the first book could go on sale. Sammy had invited me to travel north and spend the festive season with him, but I did not want to spread my poor cheer any further than was necessary, and declined. Again, it was probably unhealthy not wanting to be away from Sherlock's belongings for any period of time, but I was past caring about such things. The season did bring some good news however; one of the late and un-lamented Professor James Moriarty's relatives whom Mr. Lucius Holmes had been concerned over came out second in a duel in his native Italy. It was the closest thing I had to a Christmas present that season, and never was I so glad to see the back of a year.

**1892**

Eighteen hundred and ninety-two started with the death of the queen's eldest grandson, the Prince of Wales' son Albert Duke of Clarence, a man later falsely and vilely maligned as a suspect in the Ripper killings. He was one of the last victims of a flu pandemic that had originated in Russia some three years earlier, and had affected Great Britain on and off since. The death seemed to cast a shadow over the whole year, and I began to think that this would be the theme for what remained of my life. I had turned forty now, and throughout that year I increasingly felt just plain _old_. What I had left without Sherlock was not life, just existence.

I threw myself into completing the second of my two books, and by July it was done and dispatched to the publishers for editing, just as the last story in it, 'The Red-Headed League', began to be published in the “Strand”.

It was, oddly enough, the day after what would have been Sherlock's thirty-eighth birthday when I arrived back at Baker Street to find the main room submerged under a pile of letters. I was confused, until I remembered that I having finally bit the bullet, the first installment of 'The Final Problem' had been published in the “Strand” the day before, with a warning as to what was to come. Apparently the public was shocked to read that their favourite character was going to die, and I was now bombarded with questions, commiserations, condolences, and more than a few demands for me to change the ending.

God, I so wished that I could have done!

Having tidied away most of the letters, it suddenly struck me that whilst I had kept the main room tidy since my return many months ago, I had not actually ventured into Sherlock's bedroom at all. Indeed, I had simply turned the key soon after my return and not given it a thought thereafter, because it was just too painful. Now, I unlocked the door and peeped inside. 

It was a mess, and very Sherlock. It looked like a room of someone who had died, and for some reason, I felt bitterly ashamed. I backed out of the room, went and sat down in the fireside chair opposite Sherlock's chair (in which I never sat), and thought.

Half an hour later, the surgery had been informed that I would not be in that week, and I was covered in dust as I sorted determinedly through the mess. It struck me as I placed papers into various piles that what I was doing was verging on the morbid, but I pushed the thought down, and finished tidying his papers. I could not clean the room to the standard of Mrs. Harvelle's maids, but I made it presentable, and I dug out fresh sheets for the bed. When I had finished, the room once more looked as if someone actually lived there.

A psychiatrist would have had a field-day with me!

I had a visitor just over one week later. It was Mrs. Phyllis Moriarty, widow of the late and utterly un-lamented Professor. She was a small, timid woman, who seemed almost embarrassed at having to ask if what I had written about her husband was true. I did not want to hurt this lady, but I told her as much as I could about what had happened. She thanked me and left, and I heard soon after through Mr. Lucius Holmes that she had taken her children to start a new life in New South Wales, about as far as she could get from the Moriarty family. I believe that she also changed her name once she was Down Under, and I cannot say that I blamed her. She subsequently re-married, and never told her children the truth about their infamous father, which I could quite understand.

Almost without realizing it, I fell into the habit of tidying Sherlock's room and re-making the bed on the first day of each month, Mrs. Harvelle providing me with sheets and cleaning equipment without comment, bless the woman. I also made sure that Sherlock's area in the main room was kept clean, possibly even tidier than my own bedroom. I had received requests from both the “Strand” and my publishers (now renamed after having bought out their would-be rivals Benedict & John to become Brett, Burke & Hardwicke) for more stories, but I flatly refused, although I agreed to do one final article answering some of the thousands of questions that had been sent in over the years. Not all; there were some questions that I could not bear to face.

October of that year brought a double bonus when two of the late Professor Moriarty's relatives were drowned in a fishing accident. I was beginning to entertain suspicions at this point that Mr. Lucius Holmes or one of his brothers was behind that family's sudden run of bad luck, but after what one of them had done to my beloved Sherlock, I could only hope that it continued. They deserved everything that befell them! I was also gladdened when I received a telegram from Sammy saying that Jessica was pregnant, and I was to be an uncle for a second time.

**1893**

The following year was marked by four events of note, the first of which happened in February when another of Professor Moriarty's relatives was shot in France whilst walking too near a shooting range. For some reason that particular death made me bitter; why could that sort of thing not have happened to their evil relative and spared me my friend? Mr. Lucius Holmes visited me soon afterwards, and reminded me that only two close family remained now; the younger brother Kurt and father Louis. I was still at potential risk – I knew from bitter experience how news always seemed to reach the ears of people whom one did not wish to hear of it – but at least the risk was reduced now.

The second event gave me a rare lift, when that April my sister-in-law gave birth to a son, whom they called Henry Samuel Watson. It was a very difficult birth, eight days overdue, and her doctor told her that having any more children would be highly inadvisable. I knew that that would probably have upset Sammy a little, as he had hoped for four or five children, but he loved his wife too much to risk her health.

The third and fourth events both happened in June. At the start of the month there was the marriage of Prince George, the Prince of Wales' second son, to Princess Mary of Teck. She had been betrothed to the ill-fated Prince Albert Victor, George's elder brother, but upon his death had been 'transferred' (I was sure that the various women's rights organizations had plenty to say about that!). I did not of course attend the wedding, but Baker Street was gaudily decorated for the occasion, and I remember thinking that the last time this had happened in history, the groom had been King Henry the Eighth. I really hoped that in this case at least, history did not decide to repeat itself!

The fourth incident happened a few weeks after the wedding, at the unveiling of the fountain and a golden statue in Piccadilly Circus, and was rather curious. I remember thinking how most newspapers had wrongly described the statue as being of Eros whereas it was his brother Anteros; the god of love returned, not love given. My love had been given wholly and completely long ago, and would now never be returned. 

Grown men did not cry.

I had been attending the unveiling with Mr. Lucius Holmes, and turned away lest my thoughts be too clear in my face. Looking across the Circus, I espied a man wearing a leather jacket, whose blond hair had been blown by the summer winds into a mess reminiscent of my late friend's. He had on a pair of small round spectacles, and was looking vaguely in my direction before shuffling off. I was distracted by Mr. Lucius Holmes speaking to me, and when I looked back, the man had gone. 

I sighed unhappily. If only wishing did indeed make it so!

Sherlock's birthday – it would have been his thirty-ninth – passed uneventfully that year, and it was perhaps fortunate that I spent the days either side of it attending on one of my clients, Mrs. Buttermere, whose first-born son seemed determined to delay his advent for as long as possible. Fortunately he was healthy enough when finally out into the world, and I suppose that I owed him a debt of gratitude for distracting me at such a difficult time.

**1894**

The winter of that year was a bitter one across Great Britain and the near Continent, so I was not totally surprised when Mr. Lucius Holmes informed me that it had claimed the life of the late Professor Moriarty's elderly father, Louis. That was the good news. The bad news was that, for reasons as yet unknown, the sole surviving family member, the vile rat's brother Kurt, had decided to move from his native Germany to the town of Saint-Quentin in Picardy, a short train journey from Calais where ferry crossings to Dover called daily. Mr. Lucius Holmes' agents were watching him, but he was now uncomfortably close at hand.

Two weeks after I learnt of this, Mr. Lucius Holmes called again and told me that he was now all but certain that Mr. Kurt Moriarty knew that I had been involved in his brother's death, and had instructed his brother's henchman in England, Mr. Gadreel Evans (the man who I had briefly encountered in Miss Bradbury's office some years back), to dispatch me. To his surprise and consternation Mr. Evans had refused – it was implied (and I later had it corroborated) that Miss Charlotta Bradbury may have been instrumental in 'persuading' him over this matter - and he had predictably himself been shot soon after. Mercifully he had survived, and was able to provide Mr. Lucius Holmes with a full list of his late master's other agents in England. Which was wonderful.

Until April arrived and - ironically on the first of that month - the news that Mr. Kurt Moriarty had disappeared from his French home and could not be found. This was no joke. 

I was now (hopefully) the only London doctor who carried a loaded revolver with him in his coat-pocket.

+~+~+

Next, Lazarus rises from the dead!


End file.
